36 results, sorted by date
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Artificial Intelligence: The State of Play
The accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence across an increasing number of sectors during the coronavirus crisis means it will soon become a general purpose technology. But critical improvements that it may bring, including for sustainability, will not come solely from AI but from the understanding of, and engagement with, how the technology interfaces with the existing economic, environmental, social and political world, write Marjorie Buchser and Matthew Oxenford.
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Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Decarbonize Industrial Sectors
While AI applications to decarbonize heavy industries are promising, a focus on process optimization over its more radical use could limit its potential. However, establishing knowledge bases and policy frameworks to foster innovation could speed up the application of AI to disrupt business-as-usual operations and deliver decarbonization.
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New Horizons for Sustainable and Healthy Built Environments
Built environments have the potential to transform from primarily 'users' of natural resources to 'providers' of societal value, which in turn can create infrastructure that is in harmony with people and nature. But to reach this goal stakeholders must be aligned behind this ambition.
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Flattening the Curve: COVID-19 and the Climate Emergency
Although there is a long way to go before the true implications of the COVID-19 pandemic are known, the crisis does offer a rare opportunity for reflection on how to inform a better response to the other defining emergency of our times — climate change.
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Subsidies and Sustainable Agriculture: Mapping the Policy Landscape
Agricultural subsidies have a large part in shaping production and consumption patterns, with potentially significant effects on food security, nutrition, climate change and biodiversity. Our latest report maps the policy landscape and political economy of subsidies and outlines potential opportunities for reform and intervention.
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Environment and Trade 2.0
To focus political energy, governments and stakeholders from both the environment and trade communities should seize the ongoing discussions on WTO reform to integrate a stronger environmental dimension into the organization’s future, establishing an agenda for Environment and Trade 2.0, argues Carolyn Deere Birkbeck.
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Closing the Gap: Overcoming Barriers to Investment in Forests
How can financial flows be directed to natural climate solutions, in particular, forests? This workshop brought together scientists, NGOs and private and public investors to explore barriers and opportunities to increasing private capital investments into forests – one of the most promising natural climate solutions available.
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COP26: A Roadmap for Success
The next 14 months are critical in the fight against climate change. Ahead of the 26th Conference of the Parties in Glasgow in 2020, this article proposes a roadmap for a successful UK presidency that will deliver greenhouse gas reduction commitments at the level needed to avoid dangerous levels of climate change.
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Delivering Sustainable Food and Land Use Systems: The Role of International Trade
80% of the world’s population is dependent on imports to meet their food and nutritional requirements. Our latest report explores how trade policies can promote healthier and more sustainable food and land use systems.
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The Global Food Value Chain: A Snapshot
International value chains have long played a critical role in shaping global food production and consumption patterns. In recent decades however, their scale, nature and geographical scope has evolved significantly. Our article provides an overview of these shifts and a snapshot into 3 key commodities.
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Driven to Extraction: Can Sand Mining be Sustainable?
Sand is a critical ingredient for many of the materials that we take for granted: concrete, glass and asphalt. Sand and coarse aggregates form the backbone of the modern world and also, through land reclamation, the ground on which we live. A growing global population increasingly living in cities has led to a spiralling rise in the extraction of sand and aggregates, with serious environmental, political and social consequences.
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What Electric Business?
Is the electric business doomed? That may seem a foolish question when every analysis indicates that global electricity use will continue to increase rapidly in the coming decades. But that depends on what you mean by 'electric business'. Electricity was not originally a business. It might, once again, no longer be.
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Healthy Diets from Sustainable Production: Indonesia
Transitioning towards healthy diets from sustainable production could provide relief from some of the most pressing environmental and public health challenges Indonesia faces. This paper outlines some of the steps that could help deliver this transformation in Indonesia.
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Shifting to Sustainable Consumption for 1.5°C: Gaps, Solutions, and New Policy Agendas
Supply-side reductions in emissions have dominated thinking to date. An area that has received less attention is that of demand-side, lifestyle, and behavior changes to reduce emissions.
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Redefining Electric Resources
Treating 'run-of-the-river' hydro, wind and solar electricity as consumable commodities is fundamentally inconsistent, and has important implications for policy and investment, argues Walt Patterson.
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Flexibility: Shifting the Power Balance
As renewables become a large share of the global energy mix, greater electricity system flexibility will be critical and will originate from the small scale, write Daniel Quiggin and Antony Froggatt.
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The Electric Power Struggle
The world is undergoing a dramatic electricity transition, and the global struggle for power over this transformed electric system is set to profoundly shape our future, argues Walt Patterson.
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Breaking the Vicious Circle: Food, Climate & Nutrition
The food system is locked in a vicious circle of increasing production, environmental degradation and rising public health costs. Yields have plateaued but demand is rising while diet is becoming progressively more unhealthy and unsustainable. Rob Bailey and Bernice Lee call on the need for a clear alternative vision to break this vicious circle.
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Interventions: Sustainable & Healthy Populations
Sustainable and healthy diets could bring widespread environmental and public health benefits. Laura Wellesley outlines the strategies and interventions required to sustainably meet the nutritional needs of a growing global population.
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Interventions: Sustainable Agriculture Production
Agriculture must be radically transformed for environmental, food and nutrition security to be reconciled. Richard King outlines some of the existing and emerging opportunities to shift production towards more sustainable and equitable outcomes.
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Interventions: Natural Infrastructure
Natural infrastructure restoration and management can be a physically effective and cost-efficient way to enhance food production and deliver climate and nutrition security. Ana Yang outlines three imperatives necessary for achieving this.
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Betting on BECCS? Exploring Land-Based Negative Emissions Technologies
The workshop explored the role of negative emissions, particularly bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), in achieving the UNFCCC Paris Agreement goals. Significant deployment of BECCS is common to most Paris-compliant emissions reduction pathways, but raises important questions for policymakers.
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Supporting Healthy and Sustainable Diets: how do we get there?
At this workshop leading experts discussed what action across government, business and civil society can steer us towards healthy and sustainable diets. Spanning technologies, policies and actors, an action agenda that can unlock ambition, increase resources and continue innovation to take steps towards a healthy and sustainable diet was identified.
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Soils & climate: from hidden depths to centre stage?
The workshop explored knowledge gaps and priorities to accelerate investment and action on soil organic carbon storage and sequestration. Decision-makers from multiple sectors, with global representation, identified constraints and solutions for scaling up investment in soil organic carbon in the context of climate-change mitigation.
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Shaping demand...A first look
The dialogue explored tools to shift societal preferences and support more sustainable consumption behaviours. It analysed lessons from experiences of ‘nudging’ and other efforts in policy areas such as food, energy, buildings and infrastructure, and identified promising opportunities where interventions that target demand-side shifts could deliver more sustainable outcomes. Participants were from industry, government, international organizations, NGOs, academia, foundations and think tanks.
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Circular economy & decarbonisation: lessons from industry
High quality recycling of industrial materials is a key strategy for delivering a low carbon circular future, argues John Gardner.
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Scrapping the combustion engine: the metals critical to success of EVs
The demise of internal combustion vehicles is in sight with electric vehicles poised to replace them. But the cost and scarcity of critical metals could prove a major hurdle, writes Daniel Quiggin.
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Rethinking the Land Economy: Keeping 1.5°C in Sight
Land Economy for Sustainability Dialogue Series This first dialogue took place in early 2017. It explored key elements for a scalable strategy for reducing land-based emissions, drawing on lessons learnt from the past decade on the strategic transformation of the energy sector. It also discussed some of the critical ‘no regret’ interventions that could be scaled up immediately, and identified levers needed to create the preconditions for disruptive change beyond 2030.
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What’s cooking? The future of meat
Hailed as a major disruptor to today’s livestock industry, companies producing innovative meat analogues are blurring the line between disruption and business-as-usual, writes Laura Wellesley.
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Are we on the cusp of a demand revolution?
Technology and new business models make it possible to do much more with much less. But Bernice Lee asks, will governments and companies seize the opportunity?
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Disrupting dinner? Food for the future
Feeding future generations and avoiding dangerous climate change will require new technologies that decouple food production from land, as well as new business models that profit from disrupting consumption trends, writes Rob Bailey.
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Land-use challenges
As the world’s population becomes more affluent (and numerous) our collective levels of consumption rise, putting ever greater pressures on land and making planning and managing its use increasingly complex. Professor Tim Benton walks us through the land-based interconnections between resources, and the challenges we face in ensuring the multiple uses of land are compatible with a sustainable future.
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When demand peaks: why China is unlikely to need more resources
Resource saturation levels for China indicate that appetite for materials is likely to flatten after physical infrastructures and basic industries have been set up, argues Raimund Bleischwitz.
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‘Wicked’ decision-making in sustainable land use
The land economy provides a range of important services ranging from food to water to energy. But they are all interlinked. Here, Tim Benton explores viable pathways - with the ‘lowest regrets’ - that can transform global land use.
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Lower carbon, less materials: a ‘systems’ approach
Material efficiency could reduce industrial GHG emissions but has received relatively little attention to date. A 'systems' approach to policy formation is now needed, writes Simone Cooper-Searle.
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Making climate friendly cars: material considerations
Reuse and recycling can significantly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions impact of the materials used in cars, writes Simone Cooper-Searle.